I’m actually going to excerpt that second to last link–which is to one of my old posts I wrote in September 2010–in its entirety, because I think now is as good a time as any to revisit my words (plus, I’m an uppity goddess who likes to quote herself):

Back when everyone naively thought that electing a Democrat would end these obscene royalist decrees, it was argued by a few of us that once given, these powers are rarely given back. But I don’t think anyone expected the Democratic constitutional scholar would actually double down on the dictatorial powers. I confess, I’m fairly gobsmacked.

I often start my frontpage rants in a comment section reacting to the latest buzz in the moment, so you may have seen me post the following bit before. Please bear with another repeat, because it’s the first thing that came to mind when I read about Digby digging up that sorry old excuse that “nobody could have predicted.”

Party of Nobodies…

Nobody could have predicted Bush-Cheney would be a massive failure.

Nobody could have predicted the Iraq war would be an unfounded war and a diversion.

Nobody could have predicted Obama would make Bush-Cheney’s policies the new normal.

The Obama Left reassured themselves that the FISA betrayal in the summer of 2008 was something they could live with and then pep-talked themselves into supporting Obama all over again. Obama was not Bush, Palin, McCain, Clinton, or any other icky pol. They touted Obama as a “different kind of politician,” even though the writing was on the wall that he would make a very indifferent kind of president.

Had progressives not been so cluelessly and arrogantly preoccupied with demanding party unity and demonizing anyone who wouldn’t bow to it, they might have realized that the opportunity to put pressure on the next president of the United States was staring them in the face throughout the entire 2008 primary season and general election cycle.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda. “But nobody could have known.”

Unfortunately, there were many progressives and Democrats who did know better in 2008 but “didn’t care.”

But all in all, you never get a sense that there’s a more interesting side of Obama lurking underneath somewhere. Oddly enough, the guy only really lights up when he starts delivering those same ham-handed lines about the American Dream that fell out of the mouths of Dean and Kerry like dead bullfrogs.

And maybe that’s the difference. When those other guys took this act on the campaign trail, it was obvious they were just reading lines in a bad script. But maybe it sounds different coming from Obama because he actually means what he says, as weird as that would be. The American Dream, after all, is dying. We do need something new. That much is painfully obvious.

What’s confusing about Obama is that he’s so successful at projecting an air of genuineness and honesty, even as he navigates the veritable Mount Everest of fakery and onerous bullshit that is our modern electoral system. And the reason it’s confusing is that we’ve grown so used to presidential candidates who fall short of the images they present in public, we don’t even know anymore what a man worth the office would look like. Is this him? Or is this just a guy with a gift for concealing the ugliness of the system he represents? As I watch Obama on the campaign trail, I know I’m listening to the Same Old Shit, delivered by a candidate who could cross the Atlantic on a bridge constructed entirely from Wall Street cash culled for him by party hacks and insiders. But I suddenly don’t care. It’s not just that the alternative is four years of the madman John McCain. It’s that, if Obama wins, it will be interesting to find out, at long last, if there really can be something truly different about someone who sounds so much the same.

The Hollywood sheep chanting O-baaa-ma in those black and white PSAs were easier to take than Taibbi’s kid glove coverage of Obama in ’08.

Taibbi had made misanthropy his signature, but suddenly he didn’t care. Suddenly, he wanted to find out if a happy ending really was possible.

Where have I heard this plot before? Oh, right. The first season of Grey’s Anatomy, among other places.

The politically worn and torn journalist had finally found his I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Political soulmate in Obeautiful… alas, Obeautiful turned out to be married to the same old special interests, not ready to divorce.

Nobody could have known! Nobody could have predicted!

Just like nobody could have known that the “best campaigner” and “media darling” would be a governing disaster. (That goes for 2000 and double for 2008.)

Just like nobody could have predicted that no matter who won in 2008–Obama, Clinton, or McCain–we wouldn’t be getting out of Iraq or Afghanistan.

All of the important somebodies in left blogistan could not see what the nobodies that they exiled from their pro-Obama blogs could see.

It is well past time for left blogistan to take an inventory of themselves and realize that they’ve turned into their own Village. Many of the things that today leave them gobsmacked about Obama were red flags that they pushed aside in 2008.

And, where the Digbys profess being gobsmacked, the Taibbis act as if they had been on the cutting edge all along. But, they all sold the sellout. Not unlike the MSM that sold us the Iraq war and then force-fed the electorate “anti-war” Obama five years later.

Of course, “nobody” knows better than to expect left blogistan to ever take any such inventory. The progressive blogosphere has become the insular bubble that they railed against in the early days when they were the nobodies trying to break through the hegemony of the mainstream media.

I really resent the way the conservatives have scapegoated her for the past year and she was almost left for dead politically, to take the fall for the O’ministration. Currently with all the other crap going on, I’m just getting a kick out of at least this one good thing happening.

I would have loved to been a fly on the wall to see the look on the Benghazi-bemoaners faces when O announced he was appointing the wicked witch of the first black presidency as national security adviser. Bwahahahhahah! I just can’t stop smiling. And, laughing. Shrilly!

I’m actually really looking forward to see what the underground railroad of the feminist sisterhood has in store for 2014, 2016, and ahead–and even more importantly all the “Occupy” space for us sisters in between election cycles. Because that’s what matters most. And, I cannot even begin to tell you the amazing experiences I have had on this underground railroad, just within the last month alone. That’s going to require a separate post all its own. Suffice it to say in the meantime…

What a long strange trip it has been, huh!

Anyhow, I’m going to end my rant here and give you a few Hillary links, via the wonderful Still4Hill, to peruse with the rest of your morning reads and cuppa tea or coffee…

The most traveled secretary of state ever, Hillary Clinton, is about cover considerable air miles this month as a private citizen. June will see her in Florida, Chicago. Toronto, and Los Angeles making her supporters in those locations .very happy campers.

Wednesday of this week, she will deliver the keynote speech at Pershing’s INSITE 2013at the Westin Diplomat in Hollywood Florida.

Mid-Month the Clinton clan heads to Chicago for several days.CGI America will commence on the 12th with registration from 3 – 9 p.m. and run through the 14th. Hillary will deliver remarks at the plenary session on the 13th. Also on the 13th, at the Navy Pier Grand Ballroom, she will be honored by CURE – Citizens for Research in Epilepsy. On Sunday, the 16th, she will deliver the keynote address at the SHRM 2013 Annual Conference & Exposition at McCormick Place.

Blogging for the former First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State and…

by Ronni Diamondstein

There’s no doubt from the media buzz around Hillary Clinton’s future since she left the office of Secretary of State that many people, not only in Chappaqua, but across the nation and world, have not given up hope that she will fulfill what many see as her destiny.

Numerous websites and blogs have followed Clinton since she lost the presidential nomination in 2008, and more are sprouting up now that her future political plans remain a mystery. You can find them on the web, on Facebook and Twitter. Still4Hill continues to be one of the most prominent.

Obama, Pelosi, and Reid have managed to stink up the joint so badly since 2009 ( before that as Speaker, Nancy wasn’t all that) come twenty sixteen should Hillary decide to become the print and broadcast media’s punching bag she won’t be able to do anything if she makes it to the White House.

I tend to think she’ll know how to do the Congressional maneuvering like an LBJ…probably better. But I’m admittedly biased ;)

And I couldn’t have imagined this at the time of Stupaksis and Pelosi proclaiming that being a woman was no longer a precondition. With a frickin straight smiling face and everything …. But I do miss her up there during the State of the Union addresses. The Boehner of our existence and Biden’s toothy grin and Obama speechifying…bleh…all grey empty suits….

Great work as always, Mona.
Every day, I thank Goddess, I stood my ground and did not vote for Osameo, this time around.
And to anyone who says that voting third party is just throwing my vote away, I say what’s voting for Obama? Fool me once, yada, yada, yada.

So what’s going on? According to our US cousins at CNET, reports the NSA had direct access to companies’ servers are incorrect. It all comes down to a misreading of a leaked PowerPoint document, according to a “former government official who is intimately familiar with this process of data acquisition”.

According to them, “It’s not as described in the histrionics in the Washington Post or the Guardian [two papers with early reports of Prism]. None of it’s true. It’s a very formalised legal process that companies are obliged to do.” It’s more similar to how the police request information in criminal investigations, the source says.

The Washington Post changed its original report on Prism, dropping the claim that Silicon Valley firms “participate knowingly”.

Not sure about “played”, entirely. There is a history of this kind of data snooping, which for some reason has never been jumped upon as enthusiastically in the MSM as it has in the last couple days.
Google WIlliam Binney, Room 641A, Mark Klein just for starters.

“In other words, what we’re likely talking about with PRISM isn’t a “back door” for rummaging around through data in an uncontrolled manner, but rather a technical and legal protocol for the government to quickly gain access to specific data under order when the firm involved agrees that the order is valid and chooses not to challenge it […..]

We can, however, predict with considerable assurance that any government and any officials — regardless of political parties — who insist on treating the American people as suspects, as ignorant children whose personal data should be available to government prying merely at its beck and call, are ultimately helping to destroy critical underpinnings of what has made this country great.”

Thanks you two, and everyone!
I’m glad to have written it, and to be honest, it was probably one of the easiest posts I have ever written, because it hardly took any work to synthesize and find the right links and so forth. It came instantly. It’s all right here in me, where my mind and heart meet. Perhaps it’s a good time to also revisit these three pieces documenting the evolution of Hillary and her 2008 coalition (well my thoughts on it anyway), just in case anyone has some free time and is craving more of a Hillary fix:

We spoke with Bill Carns … who was shot multiple times in the head by Ramirez back in 1985 during a terrifying home invasion. During the attack, Ramirez also raped Carns’ then-girlfriend and forced her to pledge her allegiance to Satan. Miraculously, both Carns and his GF survived … though Carns is still partially paralyzed from the attack.

“I feel better already,” Carns told us after learning about Ramirez’s death … “I feel like I lost 50 pounds, like a huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.”

She is higher ranking than the previous idiot and transfered from safety responsibilities, so I hope her career is not stymied because of this assignment. This is what I worried about. It too easy to turn an assignment like this into a dead end for women. There aren’t enough women in the military as it is and if sexual assault prevention becomes women’s work alone it won’t be good.

Is it just me or does the entire news media — as well as all the agitators and self-righteous bloviators on both sides of the aisle — not understand even the rudiments of electronic intercepts and the manner in which law enforcement actually uses such intercepts? It would seem so.
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Because the national eruption over the rather inevitable and understandable collection of all raw data involving telephonic and internet traffic by Americans would suggest that much of our political commentariat, many of our news gatherers and a lot of average folk are entirely without a clue.

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